


Happiness Found Through Cruelty

by GrimSylphie



Series: Finding Happiness [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: BAMF Quynh, Booker Whump, Forced Pregnancy, Gen, Human Experimentation, M/M, Mpreg, Non-Consensual Body Modification, team as a family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25850782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrimSylphie/pseuds/GrimSylphie
Summary: Booker didn’t pay enough attention. That’s how he ended up back here. Facing the same fate he had nearly condemned Nicky and Joe to only a few months before.He never really expected to be rescued. He didn’t actually think deserved to be saved. Quynh disagrees.When she saved him they end up on a journey neither of them expected. One that ends in parenthood.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Series: Finding Happiness [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875796
Comments: 30
Kudos: 324





	Happiness Found Through Cruelty

**Author's Note:**

> This is very self indulgent. I really enjoy OT3 and Booker trying to find his way in a relationship that was established long before he was born, that being said there isn’t much of that here. We’ll be building up to that. I also enjoy Booker whump and mpreg has been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. 
> 
> That’s what led us here. I also wanted to write something with Quynh taking Booker under her wing despite it not being something that is likely to happen in canon. I think after dreaming of each other for two hundred years they probably know the depths of the other’s sorrow.

Booker hadn’t expected to see the deranged doctor that Merrick had hired again. He thought she was dead or at least that she was smart enough to stay away. Maybe he should have been smarter though. He wouldn’t be here if he was. 

It had started two months after he left the team. After he left his lovers behind. He had been with Nicky and Joe for about fifty years at that point. He had spent one hundred years mourning his wife after her death before he had finally gave in to the temptation they provided. He loved them but he never quite fit. They had been together for nearly nine hundred years. They didn’t understand the depths of the sorrow and loneliness he felt because they always had each other. The knowledge that they couldn’t understand him led to a rift he wasn’t sure they even realized was there. All of that wasn’t what led him to betray them though. He had kind of fallen into it. He was depressed and Copley offered a way out. If any of his team had asked him to help them find a way out, he would have gladly offered himself up for a few tests. He had been afraid that they wouldn’t be nearly as helpful when it came to his wishes. They distrusted modern medicine. More than that, he feared they would think him cowardly for wanting a way out. They weren’t wrong. 

All of this was to stay that two months in and what felt like two hundred bottles deep Booker wasn’t in the right state of mind. He missed his family, his lovers, his sisters. He missed them all and he drowned himself in the drink to avoid those feelings. That was probably why he didn’t notice he was being watched. It was probably why he didn’t notice a sniper had set up a nest on his walk home, it was probably why he was so easily taken. 

When he woke up he was in a lab. He closed his eyes again, as if to will it away. At one time this was what he wanted. Seeing the reality of it. The samples sliced and picked and pulled from the men who had welcomed him into their hearts and their beds broke something in him. He knew then he would have to wait for death because torture in the name of medicine was never going to lead anywhere.

When he opened his eyes again he was still there. He was hooked up to countless machines and monitors. He had an IV line in the crook of his arm and he could only imagine what sort of poison it was pumping into him. He was weak, so much he could barely move. It was then that she entered. The doctor (though if you asked him calling her that was an insult to doctors) Meta Kozak. She was smiling, pleased to have an unwilling subject back in her grasp. 

“Hello subject four, I wanted to welcome you to your new home. As you can see I found a new investor to fund my research. While we lost quite a bit the last time we met I wanted you to know that I have taken precautions against that this time. I will not be as greedy as Mr. Merrick, one of you should be more than enough. I will also be taking measures to ensure you can’t fight back.” Up close he could see she had fairly new and nasty scars from their last encounter. It was a small relief in this unfriendly place. “I’m going to be implementing them now so if you could just breathe deeply, we can get started.” She placed a mask over Booker’s face and though he tried to hold his breath he knew even if he died the mask would still be there and he would instinctively take a breath on resurrection. Better to just let it happen. The gas he breathed in was sweet smelling and he distantly heard the doctor counting down until he lost consciousness.

From then on he couldn’t remember much. Sometimes there was pulling and tugging. He’d briefly regain consciousness under the bright lights of a surgical suite only to be pushed back under again. He knew from one brief moment of respite that the IV was gone, replaced with a port that remained in place as his body healed around it. Most of the time he couldn’t even breathe on his own, a mask delivering gas, or during one nightmare a respirator controlled his breathing. He rarely stayed awake for more than a few moments the cocktail of sedatives and stress of the torture masquerading as medical procedures taking a toll.

He didn’t even really notice when it all stopped. He floated in and out of consciousness. Withdraw from the sedatives they kept him on killing him more than once. He saw a different woman. She was small, long black hair that reminded him on Quynh. He always fell back into unconsciousness before he could get a better look at her. 

When he finally woke up again he was in a place he wasn’t sure he’d see again. His Paris apartment. For a moment he thought it might have been a dream but the pain and soreness from every part of his body told him otherwise. He barely had time to take account of his body before he was sick, throwing up into the waste basket that was still thankfully within reach of the bed. Once he finished dry heaving he let it fall from his fingers, the metal clacking on the ancient wooden floor boards as it landed. 

So many questions spun through his mind. How did he get back here? Was this a trap? How long had he been out for? Did this mean the doctor had gotten something from him? Who was that woman? The answers were lost on him and he felt too wrung out to move as his body continued to heal whatever damage had been done to it. 

He wasn’t sure how long he laid there before he head footsteps and a woman enter his room. She was small in stature but held herself tall, you could just barely see the tight muscles through her sweater and leggings, her hair cascaded around her in waves and when Booker finally looked in her eyes he nearly cried. This was Quynh. The woman he saw didn’t just look like Quynh. It was Quynh. It was the same woman he spent the last two hundred years seeing in dreams, feeling her anger, pain, and loneliness, whenever he couldn’t get drunk enough to stop it.

She smiled at him. A wry knowing smile. “Booker, it is nice to finally meet you.” Her voice was light. She had a slight accent. It was something new. He had never heard her voice as she drowned underwater for his entire immortal life.

“Quynh. I must say this is a surprise. Are you the one who rescued me?” He asked, curious.

She nodded and stepped over to his bed. She sat on the edge and made herself comfortable. “Yes. I returned to the surface with only my dreams from you and the baby girl, Nile to guide me. She was happy, protected by the others. I saw their happiness through her and yet felt how much my presence left a hole in Andromache’s heart. Yet, you were alone. Suffering as I had suffered. They didn’t even know you were taken, they didn’t know to look for you.” Quynh explained.

“Well, that was my fault. I betrayed them.” He offered, a weak excuse. He hadn’t expected them to come for him. He hoped they wouldn’t in case they became captured alongside him.

“Yes, you cut them deep. You thought of your own pain and did not consider the consequences, you did not consider theirs.” Quynh agreed. “Still, as long as you suffered. I suffered. As it has been for your entire immortal life. My brother in grief. Mourning me even though we had never met.”

Booker shook his head. “There was nothing that I could do. I couldn’t help you, not when we couldn’t find a trace. I mostly tried to forget you.” 

Quynh looked at him with a pity he did not understand. “You showed me they were still out there. That they looked when their hearts could bear it. That was enough. It was only right I searched for you.”

Booker let out a hysterical laugh. “Why though? It was my fault. I almost sent them to the same fate. Why save me after so long?”

Quynh pulled him in as the laughter turned to tears Booker was overwhelmed with emotions. “Because you are my brother and you were suffering. It took a while to find you.” She admitted. “I am not yet used to all of the modern conveniences. I knew your apartment. You spent so long in Paris that it was easy enough to retrace your steps once I found the landmarks. It wasn’t enough to give me a trail. It took five years to find you.”

Booker felt his eyes continue to well up with tears. Five years. Five years and no one found him. No one knew to look. No one but Quynh who saw his torture day in and day out. “When I found you I lost myself. All that rage and anger boiling below the surface finally had a target. I forced that woman to remove every tube from your body. I forced her to burn the samples she took, nearly all the records she maintained. I forced her to suffer in as many ways as I could think of before she died. Then I cut her up and took the pieces to the ocean where I fed them to the sharks. It was no less than she deserved. I killed everyone she worked with. Blew the building up with materials I had seen you use in the past and then I took you home.” Quynh explained, you could hear in her voice she was quite pleased with herself. “You were still sick as your body healed what they had done with you so I have waited until you were well enough to wake.” 

Booker cried for a while longer before the tears finally dried. “Thank you. You didn’t have to.”

“No, I did Booker. Your freedom saved me once, the least I could do was return it to you so we both got some sleep.” Quynh offered.

This time Booker laughed for real. “Sleep sounds wonderful right now.” 

Quynh laid him down and then pushed him over to make room in the large bed for herself. “I couldn’t agree more.”

* * *

Booker spent the next couple of weeks recovering as best he could. He had to regain muscle mass, remind his body that he could actually eat and drink instead of being drugged and pumped with nutrients through a tube. It was far faster than someone without his gifts (his curse) would have healed but slower than he had healed in a long time.

Now just three weeks since he woke up in his own bed he was finally well enough to move on. The apartment was compromised, as much as he appreciated Quynh killing everyone involved there was no way to be sure all record of it was destroyed. Instead he indulged her whim to travel, see what had become of the world she left behind.

Quynh was strange. She was angry, he could sense her rage lurking just below the surface but she seemed to have been numbed by her freedom and instead sought to find joy in this new world. She was far from all right, but then Booker wasn’t exactly the definition of a healthy and stable person himself.

Most noticeable was this habit he had of vomiting each day. Usually right when he woke up but occasionally he would be tormented with heaving his guts up multiple times a day. He assumed it was just part of the healing process. The same as the aches and exhaustion he felt from time to time. 

It didn’t stop him from accompanying Quynh to street markets or shops or even showing her the wonders of televised football so he just kind of ignored it and allowed her to dote on him like a big sister. 

It wasn’t until three months into their journey that Booker noticed a change. He hadn’t been eating as much lately since he tended to throw his dinners up the next morning. He hadn’t touched a drink either, since Quynh told him it just made him more sad and she wouldn’t be party to it. And yet, he was forming a small belly. It was making it more difficult to squeeze into his slacks. He wondered if maybe he picked up some kind of unfortunate tumor from the doctor’s lab before disregarding it and going about his day. 

About five months into their journey Quynh seemed to doubt his ability to taste food. Hell, he was starting to wonder if that fucked up excuse for a doctor had permanently messed up his taste buds. It started with sweets. Booker normally hated sweets. That was Andy’s thing and to a lesser extent Nicky’s. Yet when Quynh offered him some of her ice cream filled chimney cake when they visited Prague he couldn’t resist. He ended up having to order one of his own as he couldn’t get the delicious taste out of his mouth. It was especially strange given when he last had them he had found them dry and unappealing. 

It happened again with schnitzel when they were in Germany. Pork was a delicacy for Booker. Joe didn’t eat it and so he and Nicky wouldn’t cook it. Which was fine, Booker had never been left wanting by their meals, quite the opposite. He was craving some of Joe’s chicken bastilla, Nicky’s pesto sauce, and maybe even some of that dim sum the two of them had mastered back in the 70s. Besides, pork was easy enough to find. Booker usually just ordered it when they went out as a team or when they ate in. This is why when Booker took the first bite of schnitzel, felt nausea instantly, and ran to the nearest bathroom. After emptying his guts he returned to find Quynh had switched their plates and was now consuming his meal. He ate her hasenpfeffer without objection. The normally gamey meat tasted better than usual. She spoke up right when he put his plate down. “Booker, this isn’t normal. Maybe you should look at the file that I smuggled out of what they were doing to you when I found you. See if there is an explanation for this.”

Booker swallowed. Wishing for the first time since this journey with Quynh began that he hadn’t stopped drinking. He thought of the thick file folder with ‘Subject 004 - Log 502’ written in neat penmanship that had sat at the bottom of his bag for the past half a year. “Maybe I should. Would you stay with me?” He asked her his eyes pleading. He was afraid of the unknown in a way he hadn’t been since discovering that he didn’t stay dead.

“Of course.” Quynh responded, taking Booker’s shaking hands in her own. “I am here for you little brother.”

That night they stayed up late pouring over the documents. Booker had his laptop open and every now and then they would google a medical term they didn’t understand. 

Booker had expected to hear that Kozak had infected him with some sort of cancer or super infectious disease that his body was struggling to fight even months later. Quynh had bet on some sort of parasite. She suggested tapeworm since she had once seen one pulled out of a man that was three or four times longer than he was tall. 

In the end Quynh was closer. The documents described how in an attempt to get more samples they created an artificial uterus using a manipulation of his DNA in an attempt to ensure it wouldn’t be rejected by his body’s attempts to heal. They failed several times before it finally took. With that done they created eggs by manipulating stem cells with his DNA. These were then fertilized with sperm from Subject 002 and 003 before being planted in his body. 

At this point Booker ran to the bathroom to throw up again. He was unwilling to believe what he was hearing. A uterus alone should not have been enough to sustain the growth of a fetus unless he was reading the internet wrong but apparently they had been successful... at least partly so. Apparently while dosed with a ridiculous amount of drugs he had gestated a child for five months before something went wrong and a c-section was performed to remove the stillborn child. When Quynh pulled him out they had just started the second trial.

That meant he was almost six months along if they were successful. Deep down he felt they must have been, nothing else could explain his current state. Booker threw up again. At this point Quynh joined him in the bathroom with a glass of water and a face towel to help him clean up. She pat his back as he dry heaved unsure of what to do next. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t love children, far from it. He had loved each of his children so much that when they began to resent and then began to hate him it broke his heart. How could he put himself through that again? How could he suffer through this knowing they might not even survive until birth? His mind raced with a thousand possibilities each worse than the last. It wasn’t until Quynh pinched the back of his neck that he was drawn out of his thoughts by the sharp pain.

“Calm yourself Booker. You are spiraling. One step at a time, talk it through. I am here for you.” She said pulling him in for a hug.

“I... I feel violated. I knew they violated me but I thought they had taken things. Things that would heal. I never really thought they would put something in me that would change who I was.” He offered. They often spoke things through. Quynh was very passionate and was likely to rip off the arm of a man who cat called her if someone didn’t talk her down. Booker was that someone. He reminded her of the insignificance of mortals like that and helped her move on. Now she could return the favor.

“Yes, but it is done Sebastien.” She replied running her fingers through his hair. “They hurt you more than you knew but they are gone now. All you can do is move forward. This doesn’t change who you are as a person.” 

He took a deep breath. He knew she was right. He felt violated and he would have to work through that. It didn’t change his current situation. “I don’t know that I can survive the loss of another child.” He admitted. He never planned to have another child. Immortality had taken that off the table. Especially after what had happened with his children as they grew old or ill. The vitriol they felt towards him still felt worse than a bullet to the heart. He knew Nicky and Joe occasionally took children in but they had never done it in his presence. He was always silently thankful. He didn’t think he could survive loving a child as his own son or daughter only to be hated in the end. 

Quynh hummed. She seemed to consider her words more carefully. “Booker, what happened with your children was awful but these things are not set in stone.” Quynh began to run her fingers through his hair. “This child would grow up knowing you were immortal and that they might not be. They will adjust. That’s just the way of things. Just as likely though, they might be like you, like us. We don’t know what makes us like this. It’s possibly a child born of two of us will be like us.” 

Booker’s eyes widened. He hadn’t considered that. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. He might not have to lose his child but his child would never be able to form meaningful connections for long periods of time with anyone but their family. 

Quynh held him closer and shushed him. She must have known what was going through his mind. She was good like that. “Tell me Booker, do you regret having a wife and children. If you had known what would happen would you have pulled away and stopped yourself from having children?” 

Booker’s eyes widened. Oh. She put it in perspective so easily. “No. I wouldn’t have returned once I became immortal. I would have spared them their memory of a loving father and saved myself from seeing them come to hate me but I loved them all and I don’t regret that.” He answered.

“Then chances are you won’t regret this child either, will you?” She asked pleased to see him come around to her way of thinking. 

“No. Shit. I’m going to be a father again. I don’t have any supplies. Quynh we have to get ready. We have to see if they’re healthy and find a safe place for them.” Booker’s mind spun with a whole new set of problems. Fortunately these he could solve.

* * *

Once they knew what they were dealing with things went quickly. They couldn’t trust medical professionals with the truth of Booker’s condition so instead they did things in their own. 

They started by leaving breadcrumbs to all the wrong places, ensuring no one would be able to follow them to their final destination. 

In Cambodia they snuck into a clinic and made use of the ultrasound. Booker had read how to perform one on the internet (thank god for the internet) and had walked Quynh through it. Once they were satisfied that the baby had a heartbeat and there weren’t any glaring anomalies like two heads they moved on. 

They jumped around Europe, Africa, and Asia. Traveling by boat, rail, and car. Booker didn’t want to risk plane in case the baby didn’t share their ability to heal. Quynh however, jumped on flights every now and then to muddy the trail further. Along the way they picked up baby furniture. Most of it in small family shops with no cameras where they could easily pay cash and be forgotten as just another young and eager couple. 

By the time they reached Montpellier they had everything they needed. Booker had chosen Montpellier because it wasn’t too small that they would stand out but it also wasn’t so big that they wouldn’t know the whole thing as if it was their own. 

They had bought a house. It was a quaint two story nestled in the oldest part of the city. It was newly renovated. Booker would normally have wanted to do it himself but at this point he didn’t want to risk it. 

Instead he and Quynh worked on home decor. First they decorated the baby’s room with a few sketches Joe had done it cities they visited that Booker had grabbed every now and again and saved for later. They picked neutral colors. Argued over putting together furniture (Quynh won, but that was nothing new) and settled into a sort of domesticity. 

One week before Booker was supposed to be due according to the doctor’s records he laid on their kitchen table in only his boxers, an old sheet below him. He didn’t have any of the parts necessary to actually give birth so it was safer to have Quynh perform a c-section. 

Of course up until last month she didn’t know exactly how one would even be performed but she watched enough medical dramas that hopefully she got it right. If not, Booker demanded she just make sure the baby was okay. He would heal after all. 

He was a bit nervous. What if something changed from the ultrasound, what if something went wrong. “Hey Quynh, don’t forget to take over the whole thing when you’re done. I don’t fancy having any extra pieces in me when this is over.”

She laughed, “Of course. I don’t want to put together another set of baby furniture with you. Now bite down, this will hurt.” Quynh worked quickly and methodically. Booker just grit his teeth and prayed for the first time in over a hundred years. He wanted this. Maybe it was just because he wanted another chance. Maybe it was because it was a piece of Nicky or Joe but he wanted this child. 

It was over faster than expected, or at least it felt like it. He passed out from pain halfway through. When he woke he was in his bed. Quynh was in a chair in the corner holding a bundle in her arms. “Did everything go well.” He asked. Eager to see his child.

“Of course. I would not let anything happen to you little brother. Nor to my sweet nephew.” She smiled presenting the bundle to him.

“A boy?” He asked, taking the child and holding him close. Sure enough wrapped in the bundle was a small boy. He examined him and sure enough all ten fingers and toes, all parts that should be there were. The baby snuggled closer to Booker’s warm, shirtless body. Skin to skin contact had proven to be important according to the books he read. 

He was so small. Booker forgot how small babies were and for a moment worried that he was too small. Perhaps they cut him free too soon or maybe Booker’s body wasn’t a hospitable home for a child. That would certainly make sense. All of that was forgotten when the babe opened his eyes. They were so bright. He was reminded of Nicky but he also knew most babies had bright eyes that darkened as they aged. Besides, his skin tone was slightly darker, as if he already had a good tan. That implied Joe might be the father. In the end it didn’t matter, he may never meet his other parent given Booker’s exile so he would have to make sure he was enough.”

“Thank you, Quynh. We wouldn’t be here without you dear sister.” He smiled looking up at her with our joy and admiration.

“It is nothing. We are family.” She day on the edge of the bed next to them. “Now, tell me, have you named this little one?”

Booker nodded. “Quynh, please meet Quentin André Le Livre.” 

Quynh giggled. “That is quite a name. I like it but I think André Quentin might have a better ring.” 

Booker laughed. “You really think so? I felt I should put you first. You are the one who helped bring him into the world after all.”

Quynh nodded. “I am honored, truly but I think it might confuse him, having a name so similar to favorite aunt that he sees every day. André, André is a good name.” She said with a smile that meant she was thinking of Andy. “Plus, when you call him by his full name, it will strike fear, just as such a strong name should.” 

Booker laughed. Quynh has always been proud of her reputation in battle. “André Quentin it is then.” He looked down at the baby who had already fallen back to sleep in his arms. “Welcome to the world André.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [One Step At A Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28958754) by [Potato67](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potato67/pseuds/Potato67)




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